


hollow

by heavensabove



Series: anika trevelyan & her circumstances [7]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Angst, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Loss of Limbs, Self-Esteem Issues, nonlinear ass writing this is
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-04
Updated: 2020-08-04
Packaged: 2021-03-05 22:27:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,671
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25712791
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heavensabove/pseuds/heavensabove
Summary: "It's half of everything now."(Anika and Thom cope with the aftermath of Trespasser)
Relationships: Blackwall/Female Inquisitor, Blackwall/Female Trevelyan (Dragon Age)
Series: anika trevelyan & her circumstances [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1749697
Comments: 6
Kudos: 19





	hollow

“I’m sorry.” Her voice is soft, sad, bitter. Thom looks up, slowing his motions with the hairbrush.

Anika and he look strange in the mirror; he’s always been bigger than her, but she looks too slight, drawn in on herself, and he looms over her like a giant fussing over a paper doll.

The empty sleeve sags corpselike at Anika’s side. He imagines Solas sitting cross-legged on the floor, like a carefree child, as he grabs a hold of a corner and _rips_.

“I’m sorry,” she repeats, her long hair framing her face like twin streams of ink; overflowing, blotting her out.

“Why, love?” he asks, but he knows why. He hates Solas with a deep, ferocious intensity.

“You had a woman who was whole and healthy,” she says, birdsong encroaching on words spoken too low. “But now…”

* * *

Her body disbelieves. Now and again, she tries to pick up a glass of water or brush her fingers through her hair or put her hand on the railing; is left perplexed, staring at nothing happening. The moments after these Thom finds nearly unbearable, watching her come to terms with herself all over again—eyes narrowing, lips pressing thin, right hand clumsily jerking to life.

* * *

When the eluvian fizzed out into cold grey, Thom had spent moments seeming like lifetimes trying to beat it back to life, smashing his shield, the hilt of his sword against it; Iron Bull had eventually seized him by the arms so he wouldn’t hurt himself in the frenzy.

He had thought he wouldn’t see her again, that she would be dissolving into green flames on the other side while he panted and begged the Maker for a miracle. But the eluvian glittered, shone gold, mysteriously functioned, and Thom fell forward from Iron Bull’s loosened grip, hit his knees on the dirt, crawled a step or two before heaving himself up and sprinting through.

* * *

Thom has to help her dress now. She can never get the buttons and the holes together enough to loop one through the other. Josephine commissioned dresses and shirts that could be pulled on one-handed, but Anika never looks at them when she opens her dresser, reaches always for her old things with their ties and clasps. She used to stare at her axes and greatswords before Thom had them moved.

“I’m more like your daughter, now,” Anika says once as she shies away from his touch, laughing; he hears, _Why do you treat me like a child?_ and feels a pang that reminds him of his years and hers.

When he reaches for her that night, determined to erase the paternal taint, the oddness of what’s missing changes the shape of them coming together. Anika lies still afterward, clenching her hand, and Thom turns, feigning sleep, so she won’t see the tears pushing against his lids, droplets clinging to his lashes.

“Less,” Anika says the next day. “It’s half of everything now.” She stabs at the meat he cut into chunks for her, never putting any in her mouth.

* * *

Her clothes loosen out at the edges, becoming more perceivable by the week. Her cheeks have lost roundness. Thom feels her ribs sticking out when he helps her bathe, can individuate the bones in her vertebrae while soaping her back.

That first night after many months away, at the Exalted Council, he had spent sleepless staring at her: admiring the delicate fullness of her face, its healthy glow, the curves of her body that had become more defined and pronounced. He feels now that he cursed her somehow, corrupted her good fortune with his gaze.

* * *

When he got to the other side, he almost stumbled straight backwards through the eluvian. The petrified Qunari warriors grimaced back at him. He steeled himself, felt the nudge of Dorian’s staff at his back and pushed forward.

She was kneeling in front of a ruined eluvian. He had dropped the weapons he’d been holding at ready, broke into a gallop, fell and skidded the last feet, tried to grab her but his hand closed on air.

Dorian gasped. “Maker, no.”

She stared into the smashed facade of the eluvian.

Iron Bull knelt, examined the round smooth skin folding into a dimple that Thom couldn’t stare at for another second yet could not tear his eyes away from. He whispered in disbelief, how the fuck? What the fuck. Looked up at them, at Dorian breathing raggedly and cursing in low tones like he was praying.

Thom asked, “Did Solas do this?” but Anika didn’t respond. Anika didn’t seem aware that anyone was there with her; didn’t seem aware that she herself was there. Thom understood that she must be in shock, scored his palms with his own nails because she felt so far away, but he asked again and again until he was shouting, until Iron Bull got up and slugged him as gently as his strength would allow.

 _Get her out, get her back_ , where things make sense and where things will never be the same again. Where she will fall into a days’ long sleep and Thom will sit on the floor with his back pressed up against the bed, certain that she’ll never wake up (but she will, thrashing and wailing and begging for help, begging Solas for help.) Where no one will know how to navigate the schism between relief and horror, between being thankful and being angry. Where Solas’ name will feel like a bloodstain that can’t be washed out.

* * *

“You called Josephine lovely once,” Anika says, “Remember?”

Years ago, in front of the long destroyed blacksmith’s shop in Haven. Blackwall then, drawn to the woman showing genuine interest in his opinions but not aware yet how deep he will fall into her. Yes, he had said then that Josephine is lovely and he would say it again now as mere observation of a fact, as Anika observes everyday the smooth, filled out evenness of Josephine’s sleeves.

But Thom doesn’t say anything, just makes a little humming sound that could be an acknowledgement, could be confusion or playful dismissal. He gently pulls the last pin out and frees her hair, slides his fingers through it to loosen and work out knots, then begins to unbutton her tunic.

“Josephine has always had a high opinion of you,” she continues, “Even after all that. She admires you for how hard you’ve worked to redeem yourself.”

Thom slides the tunic off and unwinds her breast band, throws both on the sofa, gets to work on her leggings.

“I feel that if I hadn’t been here, then you and Josephine…”

“Me and the Ambassador are on good terms, but such a thing that you’re implying could never have been,” Thom says roughly, yanking her leggings off and down, then her smalls.

As he tosses them on the sofa and crosses to the dresser for nightclothes, Anika says, “Why not? I could see it happening. I can see it happening even now.”

Thom’s hands tighten on the drawer handle, its raised metal patterning cutting into his skin.

“It will never happen,” he says, turning his head to look at Anika.

She stares back at him, eyes hazy with grief, chin set. She does not speak again that night.

* * *

He kept vigil at her bedside as Vivienne and various healers and their friends, grappling with their own unpredictable reactions and emotions, floated in and out of the room.

Anika came down with a fever after waking, and mumbled continuously, moaned and kicked her legs and complained of burning sensations, sparks of pain shooting like arrows; _the Mark_ , she whimpered and asked for Andraste, asked for her mother.

Her family did come. Her mother sat silently on the other side of the bed, staring at Anika then at him; she is an year his junior. When Thom left to take care of his own needs, a rare event, he returned and stood at the door listening to Lady Trevelyan as she wept, waiting politely until she composed herself.

Bann Trevelyan visited his daughter’s bedside sporadically; mostly he sat in the gardens praying. He’s as grizzled and serious as Thom, his silver beard neat and combed, his eyes poisonous whenever they caught sight of his daughter’s lover. Anika’s brothers sat with him sometimes, sometimes went up to sit with their mother, avoided Thom judiciously.

* * *

“You must wish,” Anika says. “You must.”

_I wish I could ease your suffering. I wish I could stop all this from happening. I wish your carriage had broken down on the way to the Conclave. I wish you thought my love stronger than this. I wish Solas was dead._

“You said once that you’d be here for me no matter what,” Thom says. “And you should know that I intend the same.”

* * *

Her fever abated; she opened her eyes one night and saw everything very clearly. Her mother had fallen asleep resting her head on the bedside.

Mama. Mama.

But it was Thom, wide awake, who heard. He had been ecstatic, seeing the clarity in her eyes, hearing her speak lucidly at things that were there. But her face was still colorless, waxen; under her eyes shadows pooled deep like the endless bottom of a sinkhole; her lips trembled, her nostrils flared.

He put his hands over her hand, said: How are you, love? How do you feel? Is there anything I can do? Tell me, love. Tell me.

She opened her lips, took a breath to push out words with but stopped. She stared at him for a long while.

* * *

“You want to—no—”

“Solas—”

“He lied to us, he _lied_ and he—”

“He’s not irretrievable…”

“— _mutilated_ you!” Thom spits with more force and venom than he intends. It’s directed at Solas. It seeps into her. “Maker, fuck!” he says as her eyes crinkle, “Fuck, I didn’t mean—”

“He did it to save my life,” Anika says, voice trembling. “I wouldn’t be here right now if he hadn’t done that. He was my friend. He _is_ my friend. I hate what he’s done but I don’t hate him. Like I never hated you.”

Thom sucks in a breath. He turns and leaves.

* * *

Thom thinks often about Solas, and what he will do when they come face to face again. He remembers Solas in his ratty traveler’s clothes, how nondescript he looked; for some reason Anika had given him a hood to wear on the field. It remained even if the armor changed. Sometimes Thom looked over his shoulder and saw that Solas’ eyes were shadowed by the hood, almost completely hidden; a dark sliver where you should’ve been able to see the most expressive part of him.

* * *

Anika may want to save Solas, but Thom knows in his gut that he’ll kill him or die trying.

* * *

“It’s stupid, isn’t it? It’s silly. I should be grateful. People were torn apart in that place. Burnt to piles of ashes. I lost an arm several years later.”

Thom hovers at the end of the bed, holding her tunic.

“I’m just stupid,” Anika says. “Just being stupid.”

“You have a right to grieve.”

“Grieve over what?” Anika laughs. “Being alive?”

“Losing a part of oneself hurts as much as losing someone close.”

“Right. Don’t they always say ‘when I lost so and so, it felt like I lost a part of myself?’ It’s reversed here. My left arm was my sister.”

He drapes her tunic over the footboard and comes around, smiling. She smiles back.

“Exactly,” he says, sitting down and putting his arm over her shoulders. She leans in and rests her head on his chest.

“If I lost you, it’d be like losing my head,” Anika says after a moment. “I wouldn’t be able to do anything anymore. I wouldn’t be able to think or feel. I would flop around, trying to scream but unable to make a sound.”

Thom looks down at her, curling his hand over her bicep.

“I’m glad you’re with me,” she says. “I’m very, very glad.”

* * *

Skyhold empties out, slowly. Varric, Dorian, Bull and his Chargers; Vivienne after she's satisfied with Anika's condition; Cullen leaves for a peaceful existence, Josephine cries the day she returns to Antiva. Cole goes one day when Maryden does, and they can't even work out when Sera disappeared (she cheerfully sends letters full of doodles of her accomplishments, reminds Anika that soon enough she'll be expected to fulfill her responsibilities as a 'Friend.')

Cassandra is the last of their companions to leave; she hugs Anika before getting on the horse, trying to keep the tears sliding along her lower lid from splashing over.

Thom watches them all go, and sees Anika's smile stretch wider at every goodbye, skin bunching and creasing, pale gums visible around teeth yellowed by lackluster upkeep and stripped by repeated contact with stomach acids.

"They're living their lives. It's wonderful," she says, staring at the ceiling in the darkness.

"It's about time we started living ours," Thom replies, turning over and coaxing her into his arms.

The day they leave Skyhold, the ground scorches their feet through the thick material of their footwear. Thom leads the horse they'll ride together to the gate, carries the few things he's accumulated and whatever she feels is important enough to bring along.

He straps everything to its sides, then helps Anika up and climbs on behind her. She looks over her shoulder at him, blinks softly and smiles.

* * *

"I want a cabin in the Hinterlands." Anika stares out the window of their room, knees drawn up to her chin. "Let it be by a lake, so you can fish. We can hunt rams…I learned a long time ago from our cook how to cure meat. We can stock it for winter. I remember this poor woman whose husband was murdered by Templars...Maker forbid…they took his wedding ring and I killed them and brought it back. This was shortly before I met you...that seems like a lifetime ago, doesn't it?"

Thom pokes at the embers in the fireplace, nodding along as she speaks. At the last sentence, he smiles. "It was another life, in many ways."

Anika hums, tapping her fingers on the windowsill. "What will our new life be like?" 

"I'll build you that cabin by a lake, once we get to the Hinterlands."

"I'll help."

"Of course."

"I'll cook eggs." Anika turns her face and grins. "We'll get a dog. A mabari maybe, like Cullen."

"We will."

"You'll build things for the house?" 

"Anything you want."

"We'll need a bed," Anika says, pursing her lips. "And a wardrobe. A place to sit and eat. Chairs for a sitting room."

Thom laughs. "Write a list and I promise you'll have them all."

"Then…Thom?"

"Love?"

"Will you build a crib?"

He sets the poker against the brick mantel and walks to the bed. Anika watches him as he sits, stares down at their hands when he takes hers between both of his.

"I will," he says firmly. "I will."

* * *

"Stay with me," she had said, in her weak, cracking voice.

Her mother stirred, lifted her head in time to see Thom take Anika's remaining hand and kiss the knuckles.

"I will, love. Always."

* * *

Anika drifts off to sleep under the covers he bundles her up in, to the sound of him humming tunelessly. He brushes her hair away from her face---she looks, so much, like that night---then wraps his arms around her.

He rests his chin on her forehead and stares out the window at the pitch black sky. A dog or wolf howls outside, long and piercing, almost mournful.

He tenses, cranes his neck, listens keenly for a few minutes. Up and down the street outside, howling continues. He breathes out slowly, looks down at Anika's face.

 _There's nothing out there_ , he thinks, tucking the edges of the blankets further in. He refocuses his hearing on Anika's steady breathing, closes his eyes and finds solace in all he has.

**Author's Note:**

> This was practice writing to get out of writer's block and it shows lmao, but still posting it because I don't think I'll be posting much anymore.


End file.
